Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/145

 a dense growth of blueberry bushes about a foot in height. The bushes at this season were loaded with ripe fruit, of a bright blue color; and squatting among them was a big, black bear, enjoying the banquet at his ease. Gathering the berries together wholesale with his great, furry paws he was cramming them into his mouth greedily, with little grunts and gurgles of delight; and the juicy fragments with which his snout and jaws were smeared gave his formidable face an absurdly childish look. To Mustela—when that insolent little animal flashed before him—he vouchsafed no more than a glance of good-natured contempt. For the rank and stringy flesh of a pine marten he had no use at any time of year, least of all in the season when the blueberries were ripe.

Mustela, however, was too discreet to pass within reach of one of those huge but nimble paws, lest the happy bear should grow playful under the stimulus of the blueberry juice. He turned aside to a judicious distance; and there, sitting up on his hind quarters like a rabbit, he proceeded to nibble, rather superciliously, a few of the choicest berries. He was not enthusiastic over vegetable food. But, just as a cat will now and then eat grass, he liked at times a little change in his unvarying diet of flesh.